Randalls Round (7 page)

It was near the end of October, but very calm weather for the time of year; and one evening the air was so mild and the faint shine of the stars so lovely that Maddox extended his walk beyond its usual limits. He had always had the beach to himself at that time of the evening and he felt a natural, if quite unjustifiable annoyance when he first noticed that there was someone else on the shore.

The figure was perhaps fifty yards away. At first he thought it was a peasant woman, for it had some sort of hood drawn over the head, and the arms, which it was waving or wringing, were covered by long, hanging sleeves. Then as he drew nearer, he saw that it was far too tall for a woman, and jumped to the conclusion that it must be a monk or wandering friar of quite exceptional height.

The light was very dim, for the new moon had set, and the stars showed a faint diffused light among thin drifts of cloud; but even so Maddox could not help noticing that the person before him was behaving very oddly. It – he could not determine the sex – moved at an incredible speed up and down a short stretch of beach waving its draped arms; then suddenly, to his horror, it broke out into a hideous cry, like the howl of a dog. There was something in that cry that turned Maddox cold. Again it rose, and again – an eerie, wailing, hooting sound, dying away over the empty moor. And then the creature dropped on its knees and began scratching at the sand with its hands. A memory, forgotten until now, flashed into Maddox’s mind – a memory of that rather horrible story in Hans Andersen about Anne Lisbeth and the drowned child…

The thin cloud obscured the faint light for a moment. When Maddox looked again the figure was still crouching on the shore, scrabbling with its fingers in the loose sand; and this time it gave Maddox the impression of something else – a horrible impression of an enormous toad. He hesitated, and then swallowing down his reluctance with an effort, walked towards the crouching, shrouded figure.

As he approached it suddenly sprang upright, and with a curious, gliding movement, impossible to describe, sped away inland at an incredible speed, its gown flapping as it went. Again Maddox heard the longdrawn mournful howl.

Maddox stood gazing through the thickening dusk.

“Of course it’s impossible to tell in this light,” he muttered to himself, “but it certainly did look extraordinarily tall – and what an odd look it had of being
flat.
It looked like a scarecrow, with no thickness… ”

He wondered at his own relief that the creature had gone. He told himself that it was because he loathed any abnormality, and there could be no doubt that the person he had seen, whether it were woman or monk, was crazed, if not quite insane.

He walked to the place where it had crouched. Yes, there was the patch of disturbed sand, rough among the surrounding smoothness. It occurred to him to look for the footprints made by the flying figure to see if they bore out his impression of abnormal height; but either the light was too bad for him to find them, or the creature had leapt straight on to the belt of shingle. At any rate, there were no footmarks visible.

Maddox knelt beside the patch of disturbed sand and half idly, half in interest, began himself to sift it through his fingers. He felt something hard and smooth – a stone perhaps? He took it up.

It was not a stone, anyhow, though the loose, damp sand clung to it so that he could not clearly distinguish what it was. He got to his feet, clearing it with his handkerchief; and then he saw that it was a box or case, three or four inches long, covered with some kind of rude carving. It fell open of itself as he turned it about, and he saw that inside was a wrapping of something like, yet unlike, leather; inside again was something that crackled like paper.

He looked round to see whether the figure that had either buried or sought this object – he was not sure which it had done – was returning; but he could see nothing but the bushes of gorse and heath black and stunted against the grey sky. There was no sound but the sigh of the night wind and the gentle lap of the incoming tide. His curiosity proved too strong for him, and he slipped the case into his pocket as he turned homewards.

Supper – a simple meal of soup and cheese and cider – was awaiting him when he got in, and he had no time to do more than change his shoes and wash his hands; but after supper, sitting on one side of the wide hearth while the curé smoked placidly on the other, Maddox felt the little box in his pocket, and began to tell his host of his queer adventure.

The curé’s lack of enthusiasm rather damped him. No, he knew of no woman in the whole of his wide parish who would behave as Maddox described. There was no monastery in the neighbourhood, and if there were it would not be permitted to the brethren to act like that. He seemed mildly incredulous, in fact, until Maddox, quite nettled, took out the little case and slapped it down on the table.

It was a more uncommon object than he had at first supposed. It was, to begin with, extremely heavy and hard – as heavy as lead, but of a far harder metal. The chasing was queer; the figures reminded Maddox of runes; and remembering the prehistoric remains in Brittany, a thrill ran through him. He was no antiquarian but it occurred to him that this find of his might be an extremely interesting one.

He opened the case. As he had thought there was a scrap of some leathery substance within, carefully rolled round a piece of parchment. That couldn’t be prehistoric of course; but Maddox was still interested. He smoothed it out and began stumblingly to read out the crabbed words. The language was Latin of a sort, and he was so occupied in endeavouring to make out the individual words that he made no attempt to construe their meaning until Father Vetier stopped him with a horrified cry and even tried to snatch the document out of his hand.

Maddox looked up exceedingly startled. The little priest was quite pale, and looked as horrified as if he had been asked to listen to the most shocking blasphemy.

“Why,
mon père,
what’s wrong?” asked Maddox, astonished.

“You should not read things like that,” panted the little cure. “It is wrong to have that paper. It is a great sin.”

“Why? What does it mean? I wasn’t translating.”

A little colour crept back to the priest’s cheeks, but he still looked greatly disturbed.

“It was an invocation,” he whispered glancing over his shoulder. “It is a terrible paper, that. It calls up -
that one
.

Maddox’s eyes grew bright and eager.

“Not really? Is it, honestly?” He opened out the sheet again.

The priest sprang to his feet.

“No, Monsieur, I must beg you! No! You have not understood-”

He looked so agitated that Maddox felt compunction. After all, the little chap had been very decent to him, and if he took it like that – ! But he couldn’t help thinking that it was a pity to let these ignorant peasants have jobs as parish priests. Really, there was enough superstition in their church as it was without drafting old forgotten country charms and incantations into it. A little annoyed, he put the paper back into its case and dropped the whole thing into his pocket. He knew quite well that if the curé got his hands on it he would have no scruples whatever about destroying the whole thing.

That evening did not pass as pleasantly as usual. Maddox felt irritated by the crass ignorance of his companion, and Father Vétier was quite unlike his customary placid self. He seemed nervous, timid even; and Maddox noticed that when the presbytery cat sprang on to the back of her master’s chair and rubbed her head silently against his ear, the curé almost sprang out of his seat as he hurriedly crossed himself. The time dragged until Maddox could propose retiring to bed; and long after he had been in his room he could hear Father Vétier (for the inner walls of the presbytery were mere lath and plaster) whispering prayers and clicking the beads of his rosary.

When morning came Maddox felt rather ashamed of himself for having alarmed the little priest, as he undoubtedly had done. His compunction increased when he saw Father Vétier as he came in from his early Mass, for the little man looked quite pale and downcast. Maddox mentally cursed himself. He felt like a man who has distressed a child, and he cast about for some small way of making amends. Halfway through dejeuner he had an idea.

“Father,” he said, “you are making alterations in your church here, are you not?”

The little man brightened visibly. This, Maddox knew, was his pet hobby.

“But yes, Monsieur,” he replied quite eagerly. “For some time now I have been at work, now that at last I have enough. Monseigneur has given me his blessing. It is, you see, that there is beside our church here the fragment of an old building – oh, but old! One says that perhaps it also was a church or a shrine once, but what do I know? – but it is very well built, very strong, and I conceived the idea that one might join it to the church. Figure to yourself, Monsieur, I should then have a double aisle! It will be magnificent. I shall paint it, naturally, to make all look as it should. The church is already painted of a blue of the most heavenly, for the Holy Virgin, with lilies in white – I had hoped for lilies of gold, but gold paint, it is incredible, the cost! – and the new chapel I will have in crimson for the Sacred Heart, with hearts of yellow as a border. It will be gay, isn’t it?”

Maddox shuddered inwardly.

“Very gay,” he agreed gloomily. There was something that appealed to him very much in the shabby whitewashed little church. He felt pained at the very thought of Father Vetier’s blue and crimson and yellow. But the little cure noticed nothing.

“Already I have begun the present church,” he babbled, “and, monsieur, you should see it! It is truly celestial, that colour. Now I shall begin to prepare the old building, so that as soon as the walls are built to join it to the present church, I can decorate. They will not take long, those little walls, not long at all, and then I shall paint…” He seemed lost in a vision of rapture. Maddox was both amused and touched. Good little chap, it had been a shame to annoy him over that silly incantation business. He felt a renewed impulse to please the friendly little man.

“Can I help you at all, Father?” he asked. “Could I scrape the walls for you or anything like that? I won’t offer to paint; I’m not expert enough.”

The priest positively beamed. He was a genial soul who loved company, even at his work; but even more he loved putting on thick layers of bright colours according to his long-planned design. To have a companion who did not wish to paint was more than he had ever hoped for. He accepted with delight.

After breakfast, Maddox was taken to see the proposed addition to the church. It stood on the north side of the little church (which, of course, ran east and west), and, as far as Maddox could see, consisted mainly of a piece of masonry running parallel with the wall of the church. Fragments of walls, now crumbled, almost joined it to the east and west ends of the north wall of the church; it might almost have been, at one time, a part of the little church. It certainly, as Father Vétier had said, would not take much alteration to connect it to the church as a north aisle. Maddox set to work to chip the plaster facing from the old wall with a good will.

In the afternoon the curé announced that he had to pay a visit to a sick man some miles away. He accepted with great gratitude his visitor’s proposal that he should continue the preparations for the painting of the new aisle. With such efficient help, he said, he would have the addition to the church ready for the great feast of St. Michael, patron saint both of the village and the church. Maddox was delighted to see how completely his plan had worked in restoring the little man’s placid good-humour.

Shortly after two, Maddox went into the churchyard and resumed his labours. He chipped away industriously, and was just beginning to find the work pall when he made a discovery that set him chipping again eagerly at the coat of plaster which later hands had daubed thickly on the original wall. There were undoubtedly mural paintings on the portion he had begun to uncover. Soon he had laid bare quite a large stretch, and could see that the decoration formed a band, six or seven feet deep, about two feet from the ground, nearly the whole length of the wall.

The light was fading, and the colours were dim, but Maddox could see enough to interest him extremely. The paintings seemed to represent a stretch of the seashore, and though the landscape was treated conventionally he thought it looked like part of the beach near Kerouac. There were figures in the painting, too; and these aroused his excitement, for one at least was familiar. It was a tall shape, hooded, with hanging draperies – the figure he had seen the night before on the beach. Perhaps it was due to the archaic treatment of the picture that this figure gave him the same impression of flatness. The other figure – if it was a figure – was even stranger. It crouched on the ground before the hooded shape, and to Maddox it suggested some rather disgusting animal – a toad or a thick, squat fish. The odd thing was that, although it squatted before the tall figure, it gave the impression of domination.

Maddox felt quite thrilled. He peered closely at the painting, endeavouring to make out clearly what it represented; but the short October afternoon was drawing in fast, and, beyond his first impression, he could gather very little. He noticed that there was one unexpected feature in the otherwise half-familiar landscape – a hillock or pile of large stones or rocks, on one side of which he could just make out words or fragments of words.
“Qui peuct venir
he read in one place, and, lower down,
“Celuy qui ecoustera et qui viendra… sacri… mmes pendus…”

There was also some vague object, a pile of seaweed, Maddox thought, lying heaped below the hillock.

Little though he knew either of art or of archaeology, Maddox was keenly interested by this discovery. He felt sure that this queer painting must represent some local legend or superstition. And it was very odd that he should have seen, or thought he had seen, that figure on the beach
before
he had discovered the mural painting. There could be no doubt that he had seen it; that it was no mere fancy of his tired mind there was the box and the incantation, or whatever it was, in his pocket to prove. And that gave him an idea. It would be extremely interesting if he should find that the old French words on the mural painting and the Latin words on the parchment in any way corresponded. He took the little metal case from his pocket and opened it.